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Judah Magnes—Adventurous Amerh an
A Character Sketch of the Hebrew University Chancellor
Edited by Devere Allen
T HE only incident in his university days
which offered some forecast of the Magnes
of the future occurred in his senior year at
the University of Cincinnati when he was editor of
the college annual. A stupid dean attempted to
impose a censorship on the material which was to
go into this senior publication. Magnes resigned
without hesitation and invited the faculty to edit
the hook. The student body hacked him up whole
heartedly and, as a result of the rumpus that en
sued, the president and a good part of the faculty
were changed.
Did Magnes dream that one day would find him
at the head of a great university? In 1898 he
received his A. 11. degree when he was twenty-one
years old. His rabbinical course of study at the
Hebrew Union College kept him in Cincinnati
until 1900, when he received the degree of Rabbi
and Teacher. He was the valedictorian of his
class.
Magnus was an earnest student of Bible and
Talmud, Jewish theology and philosophy. Schol
arship for itself, however, did not interest him.
The theological foundation for a system of Ameri
can Judaism which would lead to ultimate as
similation failed to attract or excite him. Judaism
as an ethical or sociological program held no
fascination for him. He was interested in the
living Jew. Before he could quite realize it in
his own mind, he was already a Zionist.
During his undergraduate days Masliansky, the
great popular orator, came to Cincinnati, ad
dressed a large assembly of Russo-Polish Jews in
the Yiddish vernacular and the student body at
the Hebrew Union College in the classical Hebrew
of the Prophets. For Magnes it was an exciting
experience. Yiddish was lifted out of its lowly
and degraded position of linguistic inferiority.
Hebrew ceased to he the dead and classic tongue
of sacred scripture. Using this ancient Hebrew
tongue, did not Masliansky express Jewish ideals
and aspiration to a living Jewish audience? The
net result of this experience was that Magnes
flung himself into the study of Yiddish without
which he felt it was impossible to understand the
Jewish soul. At the same time he began to devour
modern Hebrew literature on subjects not neces
sarily concerned with religion or theology.
Fortunately, upon graduation and ordination,
Magnes was not forced to accept a pulpit hut was
able to go to Germany to pursue graduate work.
He took his studies both at Berlin and at Heidel
berg with a seriousness that earned him the degree
of Doctor of Philosophy from the latter university.
'The European Jew was a revelation to him.
The Jewish youth, especially appeared to him as
more vital and purposeful than his brother in
America. Magnes found himself spiritually at
home with the loyalist group. He developed a
passionate desire to know everything about the
Jews, and to satisfy that longing he arranged to
spend his vacation in the company of a fellow-
student on a tour of the Jewish towns and vil
lages of Galician and Russian Poland.
Certainly this adventure intensified his feelings.
He emerged from the East European ghettos com
pletely re-orientated. Magnes could not find
spiritual satisfaction in mere Jewish Nationalism
of the political and secular kind. For him, Jewish
nationality and culture rooted in Judaism as a
spiritual attitude toward life, as a religious mes
sage and a daily discipline. No doubt the zeal and
genuineness of the mystics whose lives he had
Ffw Jews of modern times have aroused the conflict of opinion that centers about Judah Lrib
Magnes Chancellor of the Hebrew University at Jerusalem. Though he has been much in the
public eye—as rabbi, communal worker, pacifist, revolutionary, Zionist—little of his actual
career is known. The following sketch presents for the first time a chronological, comprehen
sive account of the life of this outstanding Jew.
DR. JUDAH MAGNES
"IThat is happening in the world today no
one can say with precision. If there be such
a thing as the world revolution, we are pass
ing through some of its phases. IVe are at the
end of an epoch, but we do not know if life on
this planet will be spared so that a new epoch
may be begun. . . . IVe stand before either a
world catastrophe, or perhaps before the dawn
of a greater era of truth and wisdom.”
studied in their native villages contributed to his
conversion to a rigorous orthodoxy.
With this kind of spiritual equipment Magnes
returned to America. To accept a pulpit in one of
the less important Reform Jewish congregations
then available was out of the question. As a tem
porary stop-gap he became an instructor in the very
institution which had given him his rabbinical
training. A year of this work convinced him that
he did not belong there. He had too many things
to say and he required a platform from which he
could expound his views.
It happened that at this time one of his class
mates and close friends was about to give up the
ministry. Through his influence Magnes suc
ceeded him as rabbi of a fashionable Reform
I emple in Brooklyn. Here he enjoyed the luxury
of living bis personal life according to the strict
tenets of Orthodox Judaism, while preaching
national Judaism to a congregation which most
likely had no inkling of what it was all about.
But one thing they did understand—that their
erstwhile empty pews were being filled by strange
men and women, not of their social set,'and sus
piciously of West European origin.
In addition to his rabbinical duties Magnes
threw himself into organization and propaganda
work as secretary of the Federation of American
Zionists. His name became well known to the
thousands of Jews who read the Yiddish news
papers. His Brooklyn congregants, however, were
not among these readers and they might have
remained blissfully unaware for all time that the
gifted rabbi, who charmed them every Sabbath
with his forceful personality and pulpit style, was
leading a double life. The Kishineff pogroms and
the other similar attempts on the part of Czarist
Russia to solve the Jewish problem by killing off
those Jews who would not enter the Holy Russian
Church or emigrate provided the climax in the
relationship between the young rabbi and his con
gregation. Magnes now became the fighter as well
as the orator. He organized and personally led a
parade of Jews up Broadway and Fifth Avenue
in funeral procession as a demonstration of sor
row and indignation. His congregation did not
mind his Zionist theories. They did resent his ac
tivities. There was unrest in the Brooklyn con
gregation. He was given orders to behave and
to confine himself to his pulpit. Magnes resigned.
His friends rallied in his behalf, and the resigna
tion was withdrawn.
However, the very activities which irritated his
congregation served to make Magnes rabbi of the
largest and most influential congregation in Amer
ica—Emanu-El of New York City. The late
Ivouis Marshall happened to attend one of the
mass meetings addressed by Magnes. The level
headed lawyer was attracted by the gifted young
orator, although he could hardly have agreed with
the doctrine that was expounded. There followed
a period of negotiations during which Magnes was
by no means overly enthusiastic. His own heart
must have warned him that the proposed alliance
could not, under the circumstances, last very long.
Some of his friends, notably the late Professor
Solomon Schechter, pointed out to him that it w>
his duty to accept.
Magnes graced Emanu-El’s pulpit as no rabh
of this great temple did before or has done since.
A few big-minded men appreciated him then a>
they do now. But to the majority of the memhe.'
he spoke a strange tongue and again, as in Broo-
lyn he attracted an even stranger following.
Magnes’ interests were with the Jewish mas>e>,
with the proletarian Jew. Judaism could not n * 1
without them, nor would Zion be re-peopled )
millionaires. The real Magnes emerged w
enigma to his congregants. Admired and eun
loved for his sincerity and his personality, he " •
feared for his dead earnest way of blurting ou
unwelcome facts and for what was impbec in
whole scheme of his thought and wo
crisis and ultimate severance of relations ul
about over a set of concrete recommend ,(>n * ,
a change in ritual and lithurgical procedure " ‘
Magnes submitted to his congregation. e
tees of Emanu-El rejected them in
upon Magnes resigned.
Thinking that the avowedly tradi ^
offered a more likely field for his a A' * oldest
became the spiritual leader of one ot 1
orthodox Jewish congregations in * c nt.
There he suffered an even greater dis ' ^t-
Smug, self-satisfied Orthodoxy was n<
ter than the Reform brand and wa>
vinced that America was (Please tu> n
•.allv con-
t>agt 1^
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* the southern
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